If You Can't Beat Them
by Kaara
Summary: Yamanaka Ino was seventeen when Morino Ibiki, all scars and smiles and swishing trench coat, approached her with an offer. Ino-centric. OneShot.


**Title:** If You Can't Beat Them.  
**By:** Kaara.  
**Prompt:** Idek man.  
**Disclaimer:** Naruto is owned by Kishimoto.  
**Rating:** R, because of language and sexual/as well as other things implications.  
**Note:** I don't know if people even remember me anymore haha. This has been sitting around in my unfinished folder for years, I kid you not. I've been writing snippets of this story throughout 3 years and I'm letting this go as it is. There might be a continuation, since I end it in a hanging kind of way but I can't promise anything. I'll just say that this fandom has crazy moments but I've come to terms with that. I love Ino, I love writing her and I hope you'll enjoy this. Feedback is very much appreciated and loved.

**x**

**If You Can't Beat Them (Join Them)  
**

**x**

**1.**

**x**

Yamanaka Ino was seventeen when Morino Ibiki, all scars and smiles and swishing trench coat, approached her with an offer. At first, she had simply ignored the intimidating man heading toward her, convinced that he was searching for someone else inside the crowded cafeteria because Ibiki was an important man and someone important had never bothered to single her out before. The routine of a lifetime was not meant to change overnight after all. (Yes, she was still bitter about Sakura's luck in the mentoring department and no, she wasn't going to get over that anytime soon). So, Ino quietly sipped on her cold green tea and flipped through the glossy pages of a fashion magazine, pursed her lips at overpriced dresses and tacky accessories without another thought about Ibiki.

That was until the screech of a chair against the floor from somewhere right in front of her interrupted her perusal of Konoha's deteriorating fashion scene.

Of all the bloody other chairs.

Ino's eyebrow twitched in annoyance and she looked up, mouth parted to deliver a scathing comment for the intrusion since _hello, personal angst time needed here?_ The words, however, died and rotted in her throat when she saw Ibiki in her line of vision. Ino was so surprised (_oh shit, she's not in trouble, right?_) that it took her several seconds to realise that she was staring and that Ibiki had his eyes trained on her magazine with a look that she could only classify as amusement and genuine curiosity. Upon regaining a decent control over her body parts, she snapped the magazine close and slammed her palms over the cover, tittering nervously.

"Can I help you, Ibiki-san?" she asked, demure and polite with just a hint of guilt, even though she was quite sure that she had done nothing wrong. She had heard enough about Ibiki's reputation to make the effort – there were rumours about people disappearing after pissing off Ibiki and turning up with fewer limbs than a limpet.

Ibiki answered the question with a slow smile, scars crinkling and Ino decided that this was a good time to start fearing for her life. He placed both elbows on the table and leaned forward. Ino leaned back, survival instinct kicking into high gear.

"Yamanaka Ino... correct?"

What were the odds for successful escape if she tried to make a run for it? Her eyes instinctively sought out the only exit from the cafeteria. She knew that Ibiki knew what she was doing. "Um. Yes?"

"I've been searching for you." He paused and the smile slipped into a blank look. Ino might have squirmed a bit at that point. "Since morning."

"I'm sorry!" Mental images of being methodically dismembered in some dank underground dungeon made Ino screeched out the apology and it took all her courage to not bolt out of the cafeteria in record time. "Whatever it is, I didn't do it!"

At that very moment, Ibiki had managed to display more facial expressions than people thought him to possess.

Ino would've been flattered, if she wasn't too busy mentally-composing her last will.

"Unless you have something detrimental toward the village in mind, you should relax," Ibiki eventually drawled out after several (agonising, for Ino) seconds. "I'm here with a proposal."

Suitably embarrassed, Ino ducked her head in a desperate attempt to hide her reddening cheeks. But upon hearing what Ibiki said, she blinked at Ibiki, confusion warring with curiosity in her eyes. "What... kind of proposal?"

"Something that you might find attractive."

Ino bit back the urge to roll her eyes and demand for Ibiki to stop being such a cryptic bastard; she wasn't suicidal enough. Instead, she continued to look politely perplexed. "I don't think I understand..."

There was something creepy about the resulting smile that surfaced on Ibiki's face. He shifted languidly, graceful for such a large man and Ino was reminded of a predator, waiting to pounce for the kill. That didn't make her feel any better. "What do you think about Torture and Investigation, Yamanaka?"

**x**

**2.**

**x**

"So... you're saying that Ibiki, out of nowhere, met up with you for lunch _and_ invited you to join his department?"

Ino scowled at the look of disbelief on Shikamaru's face. "Sometimes, I wonder why I can't get a good-looking, understanding guy best friend that praises me for everything."

"It's karmic retribution for all the times you called Chouji 'fat'," Shikamaru retorted without missing a beat. He moved his army forward, keeping his eyes on Ino's pieces on the Go board. "What's your answer?"

Ino contemplated on her strategy for a good second, decided that she would lose anyway and hazarded a move. "'Fatty' is a perfectly acceptable term of endearment. I love Chouji very much."

"No, I mean to Ibiki."

"Oh." Ino observed in contemptuous fascination as Shikamaru destroyed the formation that she had painstakingly built for the last four rounds in one single move. It's a wonder why she even bothered to play with him. "I said yes."

Shikamaru looked up from the Go board with an unreadable expression on his face. His finger hovered over one last deciding piece that would end the game but he didn't immediately push it forward. "Why?

Ino shrugged, "I don't know. It sounds attractive."

They spent the next few minutes in silence, where Shikamaru continued to stare at Ino, who was staring at the board and its scattered pieces. Finally, with a defeated sigh, Shikamaru made his move and claimed glorious victory for the thousandth time since they started playing together. Ino accepted her loss with dignity – minimal amount of bitching and a hard smack on Shikamaru's shoulder.

"... You're so troublesome." He winced as they cleared the board. For such a skinny girl, Ino sure could pack a punch.

She grinned unapologetically and rewarded him with yet another smack. "You need a new catchphrase. That one's getting old by now."

**x**

**3.**

**x**

"This is your mentor from now onward." Ibiki nodded at a dark-haired woman in red kimono and Ino instantly relaxed when the woman smiled, gentle and sweet, in agreement. She seemed to be a direct contrast of Ibiki and Ino was just thankful that there was someone normal inside the department, instead of the array of certified psychopaths she had met so far. Ibiki clapped a hand against Ino's shoulder (she staggered under the assault but somehow managed to keep her balance) and none-too-gently nudged her forward. "Suzuna, she's all yours. Have fun."

He spared one last smile at Ino (that was more unnerving than comforting) and exited the room without another word, looked as though he had either pressing matters to attend to or he just wanted to get the hell out of there before the metaphorical shit-hit-fan situation occur. Ino heaved a sigh of relief and grinned at the older woman, all too willing to start unloading her concerns about the general mental health of the Torture & Investigation members. "Well, I'm _so_ glad I'm with you because—"

She was immediately silenced when something sharp and pointy missed her left eye by a margin of inches. Ino gaped at her newly-acquired mentor as a trail of blood sluggishly made its way down her nicked cheek. Suzuna's smile remained a permanent fixture. "Ino-chan, I _must_ inform you that I _hate_ idle chitchats. They're _such_ waste of time."

"Oh. Um."

"And we simply _cannot_ stay here all day." Suzuna nodded, green eyes twinkling excitedly. Ino cringed, getting the impression that her mentor very possibly scored higher in psychosis than Ibiki did. Great. "Come on _now_, off we go! We have _so_ much to see!"

Ino whimpered and reluctantly followed Suzuna's lead.

**x**

**4.**

**x**

Sakura wondered, for the nth times that afternoon alone, if Ino had finally lost it.

"—and do you know what she said to me?" Ino started gesturing wildly and Sakura shook her head, subtly moved their cups of tea from Ino's immediate vicinity. The blonde was too engrossed in her narration to notice the stares from tables around theirs. "She told me to cut my hair! Can you believe that? Cut my hair! As if!"

"But if it's for a valid reason…"

Ino narrowed her eyes and Sakura scooted a few inches back, knew her friend well enough to recognise an impending bitch fit. "Just because my hair's longer than hers! It's not even anything professional! She was all," Ino wrinkled her nose and did a poor imitation of her mentor, complete with oddly-placed emphasis, "'Ino-_chan_, I'm _sure_ you'll look _better_ with shorter hair, _don't you think so_?'" Vague strangling gestures punctuated the sentence. "I'm gonna kill her if she touches my hair. I'm serious. I don't care if she's Ibiki's girlfriend or whatever—"

"Whoa! Back up a bit there!" Sakura's eyes gleamed at the prospect of juicy gossips. "Your mentor is Ibiki's girlfriend?"

A momentary lapse of silence and Ino fidgeted on her chair.

Sakura extended one well-manicured finger and poked her friend's shoulder. Her gleaming green eyes reminded Ino of a cat who had just swallowed a whole cage of canaries. "Come on. Spill."

**x**

**5.**

**x**

"Ino-chan, _have_ you had _sex_ before?"

Ino choked on her sandwich and it took several minutes before she managed to dislodge the piece of bread and chicken from her throat. Gasping for air and turning an unhealthy shade of red, she stared at her mentor sitting across the table. "Wh-_What_?"

Suzuna tilted her head to a side, patience in the curve of her lips and she repeated the question loud and clear, as if they were not surrounded by a mass of very hungry, very nosy fellow ninja. The cafeteria fell into hushed, expectant silence and Ino was conscious of eyes boring holes into her body. She prayed that her father hadn't returned from that mission in Suna because there might be bloodbath and very, very messy removals of private parts involved if Yamanaka Senior was to participate in this particular discussion.

For once in her life, Yamanaka Ino wished that she was not the centre of attention.

Ino mumbled something into her sandwich.

Suzuna (and collective able bodies around them) leaned closer. "_Yes_?"

Now annoyed, Ino was about to inform the whole population of the cafeteria that '_no, she hadn't had sex with anyone and it's a choice, isn't it so shove off you depraved perverts before I poke your eyes out with my thumb_' when the doors at the far end of the hall banged open loudly. Naruto, ill-timing and everything, announced his presence with a triumphant bellow that rattled the portraits on the wall and everyone's eardrums. There was a split second of silence before Naruto found himself to be at the receiving end of numerous death glares and several well-aimed sharp projectiles. His surprised yelps echoed all over the building.

Ino escaped in the midst of that chaos and made a mental note to buy Naruto a bowl of ramen or two in the future.

(And then she – thankfully – remembered Naruto's infamous appetite and decided to just sod it; she owed the orange bastard nothing).

**x**

**6.**

**x**

There was a huge, ominous-looking folder waiting for her when she slinked back into the department headquarter the next day. The whole floor was deserted (there were a total of five personnel in the whole department and Ino thought Ibiki was seriously overcompensating) and Ino hovered around the doorway, eyeing the folder in suspicion. She could see the symbol of T&I on the cover. Based on her short experience with the department, it couldn't be anything good.

"Are you practicing your stealth skill, Yamanaka-san?"

Ino's fingers curled around the doorframe and pretended that her heart didn't just short-circuit from surprise and terror. "Hello, Harada-san."

"If you are, may I suggest less hovering in the open and more fading into the background?" The bespectacled man nodded, thin lips stretched into his trademark too-toothy smile. Ino subtly inched away with her back against the wall. Harada simply matched her retreat with a step forward and widening smile. "But I suppose you are more concerned with the... ah, _breaking in_?"

Ino had a feeling that she would regret asking what she was about to ask. Especially when Harada looked so gleefully expectant. But she was annoyed, he smelled like a fish market and she wanted answers. The combination of the three was enough to bypass her don't-ask-questions-to-creepy-old-guys policy. "What's a breaking in?"

"It's—"

"_Harada_."

If Death was ever mortalised, Ino thought that it would look something like Suzuna. Silent and graceful and well. Deadly. Very, very deadly. She was standing behind them, prim and proper in a powder blue kimono that looked too impractical to be used in field missions. The small smile that graced her feature didn't quite reach her eyes and Ino developed an instant fascination over the patterns on her sandals.

Harada's smile turned sickening. And predatory. But mostly sickening. "Suzuna."

"I _see_ you've _found_ Ino-chan."

Mental Ino pointed out that nobody found her and she was there on her own free will which kind of made her stupid and suicidal in retrospect, really, what was she thinking. And by the way, _could you please don't talk about me like I'm not here, thanks_.

Physical Ino silently counted the cracks on the floor.

"Ah, yes. I was just about to inform her of the traditions of the department."

The temperature lowered a couple of degrees. Any lower and Ino might have believed it if someone was to tell her they had relocated to the Snow Country in a bizarre form of long-distance teleportation freak accident. Suzuna tone was glacial when she said, "I _believe_ that is my _duty_?"

Harada eyed her for a brief second and shrugged. "Just thought I'd be helping."

"I thank _you _for your concern but I am _fully_ capable of _handling_ this on _my_ own."

"If you insist," Harada sneered and Ino might have puked a little inside her mouth when he turned to her with a wide, jagged grin that reminded Ino of piranhas. "Yamanaka-san, I hope you'll enjoy yourself. Until we meet again."

Ino blinked and nodded complacently. She was too nauseous to do anything else.

Once the echoes of Harada's footsteps disappeared into another hallway, Suzuna placed a hand on Ino's shoulder and steered her into the department. It was a move engineered to soothe and disarm but Ino was a ninja, and a female one at that too. Paranoia was a welcomed perk of the job.

"Suzuna-san...is it too late to apply for medical leave for the day?"

Suzuna's smile was brilliant in its madness. "Ino-chan, _this_ is where the fun _begins_."

Ino would (very, very) soon beg to differ.

**x**

**7.**

**x**

"You're doing _Sex Education_?"

"Say that out loud again," Ino calmly placed pieces of meat onto the grill in precise, calculated movements, "and I'm going to cut off your penis and feed it to rabid squirrels."

Kiba winced and Ino mentally congratulated herself when she saw one of his hands going towards the Inuzuka family jewels to protect them from potential harm. Apparently, her lessons in the Threats: How To Use Them Effectively 101 was useful not only in interrogation rooms, but also in dealing with insensitive bastards who called themselves friends. The barbeque restaurant buzzes with pleasant conversations around them and Chouji stared in impatience at the sizzling meat.

"Squirrels aren't carnivorous," Shikamaru pointed out after a lapse of silence.

Ino's chopsticks clicked menacingly. "Don't tempt me, Shikamaru."

Shikamaru instantly shut up.

Ino sighed into her lukewarm green tea. She didn't really want to detail how she had spent an entire morning being embarrassed and traumatised as Suzuna explained the entire process of 'breaking in'. The image of The Folder (the capitalisation was justified) had burnt itself into her retinas, at the back of her eyelids and it was just as horrifying as Harada had implied. Suzuna had asked her to choose and Ino, to be perfectly honest, _didn't want to_. She had until tomorrow to make up her mind.

"Isn't all this classified, Ino?" Chouji asks, mostly to try and distract himself from the slow progress of their lunch-in-making. "Won't you get into trouble for telling us about it?"

Ino hesitated and wondered if a team of ANBU (or God forbid, _Ibiki_) was currently hiding out behind tables and chairs to storm their little get-together. "I don't think so. I mean, they didn't make me swear to secrecy about it or anything." Ino added _not that I remember of_ mentally. She threw subtle glances around them, just in case.

Kiba, who had been deep in thought for a few minutes, suddenly perked up and announced in a solemn voice, "Maybe I should join T&I too. They might need a Tracker in the team."

In three seconds flat, Ino came up with a conclusion that perfectly encapsulated Kiba's entire being. "You're an idiot."

"Hey, if you get to sleep with older men for practise, I'm sure as hell gonna try my luck!"

Shikamaru and Chouji edged as far away from Ino without being too obvious.

Ino batted her eyelashes at Kiba. "This is where you should start running for your life."

**x**

**8.**

**x**

"You awake, Yamanaka?"

Ino reeled back from her thoughts and blinked at the grinning face hovering in front of her, barely avoiding the tip of a metal needle that came with the aforementioned face. She arranged her elbows into a less awkward position, lips twisted into a pout. "I was just thinking."

"Don't think too much. You look like you sprained something in there," came the easy reply and Ino chucked a pillow a bit too forcefully to be playful. It was deflected with minimal effort and the early sun painted pastels over scars-riddled skin, halfway swallowed by the forest green of Konoha's regulation colour. "Nice try. Maybe you can use pillow fights during interrogations sometimes."

Ino scoffed and wrapped a blanket around herself, tried to not trip over the folds as she headed towards the shower. "I don't know why I picked you. You have horrible bedside manner."

"I'm devastatingly good looking."

"You're devastatingly _old_."

In spite of what she had just said, Ino watched in appreciation as Genma stretched over to pick his shirt up from between Ino's purple outfit and mesh leggings. She knew he knew she was watching, if the exaggerated flex of muscles for the next minute was of any indication. It had been nearly a year since her recruitment and while her father had confronted Ibiki in verbal (and semi-physical) showdowns that resulted in several near-death experiences on both sides, Ino had settled into Torture & Interrogation quite comfortably.

(Sakura kindly pointed out it's because Ino was as crazy as the rest of them.

The rest of their friends, in a rare moment of unity, had agreed.)

Genma was sitting on the bed when she stepped out of the shower, chewing on his needle thoughtfully as his eyes followed Ino's short track across the room. "How's your apprenticeship going?"

"Okay. Suzuna makes me do embarrassing things once in a while but it's nothing I can't handle." Ino carefully dried her hair and sat next to him, didn't really feel sorry when droplets of water splattered over his uniform from her vigorous rubbing. "I'm going on a solo assignment soon."

He raised an eyebrow. "Sure you're up to it?"

Ino scowled and stopped rubbing long enough to fix him a glare. "I don't think I like where this conversation is going."

"All I'm saying is that," Genma had the decency to look partially concerned and knowing his penchant for being blasé, Ino could maybe appreciate the effort. "It gets heavy out there."

"I'm fully aware of that, thank you very much." Her towel was soon discarded and she slipped into her clothes quickly, tried to ignore Genma as he watched her jerky movements. "It's only B Class anyway; don't get your panties all twisted."

"You get bitchier the longer I know you," Genma said, amusement along the seams of his voice. "And you used to be such a good, compliant girl."

Ino flashed him a sickly sweet smile, biting back giggles when she remembered the first night she was introduced to Genma. Suzuna had not been subtle in her instructions, especially regarding special positions and _oh, Ino-chan, you might want to ask Shiranui-san to be gentle the first time_. Ibiki had looked purposely blank and disappeared in the middle of a particular enthusiastic advice from Suzuna, from which Ino was introduced to a side of her mentor's that she really did not need to know. Ino shuddered at the memory.

"I learnt from the best," Ino finally said and checked her reflection to make sure that he had not left any marks on her skin. The last time she went home with a bruise somewhere on the juncture of her neck, Yamanaka Senior had waged war against the department for a whole month and she was given a warning for it. It was Not Pleasant. Satisfied that everything was flawless, Ino turned to Genma and smirked. "Besides, you just don't want me to go on missions so you can continue taking advantage of me, am I right?"

He laughed at the jab and stood up to accompany her to the door, his arm heavy around the circle of her waist. They stood at the doorway in silence and when Genma pressed a kiss against Ino's right eyebrow, he lingered for a second too long for it to be chaste. "Be careful, alright? I'm too lazy to train another one of you people."

Ino's grin wide and confident when she said, "I'll be back before you know it."

**x**

**x**

**END**


End file.
